A New Anonymous Hack Lets You Shoot Up US Government Sites with a Nyan Cat Spaceship

In the wake of Aaron Swartz's suicide, your friendly neighborhood cyber-vigilantes Anonymous have been lashing out. It's mostly been DDOSes and cyber-vandalism, but their most recent project is a bit more fun, and lets you play Asteroids with a Nyan Cat spaceship that blasts up sites.

Over the weekend, Anonymous attacked the United States Sentencing Commission's website, defacing it and leaving a message threatening the release of "warheads." Since then, the site has been cleaned up, but it seems Anonymous also installed the stealth "Nyan Cat Asteroids" hack behind the scenes, waiting for activation.

At the moment, USSC.gov is down, but the hack's been poking its head out on other sites as well. Head on over to the Eastern District of Michigan's United States Probation Office website, for instance, and enter the Konami code (↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← →B, A, Enter). After the dialog box calling for then end of "Prosecutorial Overreach," you'll be free to fly around your own personal Nyan cat with Asteroid controls and start making a mess of the place.

It's not exactly the most destructive hack there ever was, and it certainly doesn't have that characteristic Anonymous pomp, but you can't say it's not amusing. There's no telling how many different sites it affects but no doubt they'll start getting taken down and fixed as they're found out, so get your fill now. [Naked Security]